


i want to float, be cradled by the universe

by dreamclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Fantasy, Fictober, Happy Ending, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, also hyuck May Be The Sun God, also tw for distant parents? renjuns mom is kinda loopy so if that hurts you id skip this one, its intense, little angst little fluff.... lots of love, maybe . not to spoil anything, they both worship gods, they kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamclub/pseuds/dreamclub
Summary: Huang Renjun is the son of the Moon Priestess, the bearer of a problem-causing birthmark, and a reluctant worshipper. Lee Donghyuck is the warm, charismatic boy who won't leave him alone.When Renjun's birthmark begins to cause problems, he learns that Hyuck isn't who he seems to be.





	i want to float, be cradled by the universe

**Author's Note:**

> day two of fictober! prompts were 'Under the sun and the moon.' and 'lost'.
> 
> title from 'we are up early again honey bug' by fox academy
> 
> i really like this, its different from any fic ive written before and also my first renhyuck so Be Nice Please...... as always i love comments and need motivation for this challenge so yell below or contact me at 
> 
> twit: @redxuxi  
> cc: curiouscat.me/xuxiclub

Town square is dangerous. Not because of crime, because everyone is too busy to do anything that could land them in trouble. Nor are there bustling carts, because there are separate back roads for those. No, it’s something much more dangerous; citizens, milling about and gossiping. 

They fill the streets like weeds between cracks, whispering behind palms as they exchange money and load stock into their stalls.

And Renjun? He’d practically been born in front of prying eyes, grown up as the center of attention, even when his Mother kept him locked away in the temple to pray and pray and pray until he was the perfect son. Growing up with strict parents, you learn to be sneaky. You learn to resent. To stick to the shadows. 

Renjun pulls his hood further over his head, covering the markings snaking up his neck, licking up his jaw like silver flames. He’s halfway to his Aunt’s produce stall when eyes start to press in on him, flocking like flies to a carcass. His anonymity lasted longer than usual, at least. 

Being the Priestesses’ son had never been easy. There were those that would kill to be in his position. He was nearly ready to kill to get out of it.

“Renjun, is that you?” someone calls from behind him, and he’s so shocked that he’s being directly addressed that he nearly turns around.

After shaking off his momentary shock, he steels himself and keeps walking. Hushed murmurs and shifty stares he can handle. Direct confrontation? Not so much. Head down, foot after foot, and he’d be safe. Someone with a tray offers him a sample of some meat that still looks alive, pulling away when they see his face. A woman sprays perfume in his face, the floral scent clinging to his tongue.

Everything slows down for a moment when someone grabs his sleeve. They tug, and their hand, warm and solid, brushes his wrist. Nobody has touched him directly in nearly a year. A year without human contact. And now some stranger is groping him in the square.

Renjun pulls away like he’d been shocked.

The boy who’d grabbed him walks next to him, matching his stride. Honey hair falls just barely too long over hazel eyes that shine in the warm rays of the sun. He’s short yet lanky, with surprisingly long legs, and Renjun could tell that even if he managed to run away this kid would chase him.

Plus, a part of him appreciates the directness. So he stays quiet and gives him a chance to talk.

“I’m Donghyuck,” he sticks out his hand, smiling so wide his face looked like it may split in two. He offers a hand for Renjun to take. He stares coldly back, moving just slightly further away from the boy. Donghyuck. “Sorry for grabbing you like that, you just wouldn’t stop.”

He draws back and wipes his hand on his pants, which have the golden embroidery of the Sun worshippers down the sides. 

Renjun clears his throat and says, “Is there something that you’d like from me?”

“He speaks!” Donghyuck teases, bumping his arm into Renjun’s. He really is shameless. Renjun could never imagine harassing a stranger and making _bodily contact_ with them.

“What,” Renjun stops, watching the people split around him like a stream, rushing to get to where they need to go, “Do you want?”

Everyone walking past takes special care to not touch him, to give him a wide berth. He hears a whisper about ‘the Moon priestess’, and a few ‘look at his markings’, which prompts him to tug up his collar. 

Donghyuck just laughs and lightly pats his back. Again with the touching. “Do I have to want something other than your company, Renjun?”

He says his name like it’s something familiar. He gets the sense that this boy had very seldom been told ‘no’.

“I’m afraid that my company is not something that I may offer.” Renjun gives Donghyuck his best haughty glance, looking at him over his nose. “I’m very busy. Will that be all?”

Without waiting for Donghyuck’s reply, he hurries away, dodging and weaving through the crowd.

-

Waking up outside is never pleasant, however it was his fault that he’d fallen asleep on the ground; his Mother was rather harsh with her rules and if he hadn’t taken so long at the market, he would have had time to complete his tasks in due time. Instead, he had to complete three hours of worship in the back garden of the temple late into the night, and had fallen asleep somewhere mid-prayer.

Next to him is Jaemin, who has fallen asleep as well. Intentionally, if the knee-pillow propped under his head was anything to go by. In the late winter chill his fingers had gone purple, but Renjun felt eerily warm, as if his body was on fire.

Perhaps a fever?

A bubble of warmth encased where he was curled up, like sitting in direct sunlight. There’s a border around him where the frost hadn’t dared to creep, like his body heat had radiated into its territory and melted it cleanly away.

When he stands and stretches, his arm breaks the barrier, and he feels incredibly cold on only his exposed hand.

He shakes away his confusion and nudges Jaemin to wake up.

-

“Good morning!” DOnghyuck smiles cheerfully, waiting with a basket in his hands outside of the Moon temple. Just for Renjun, apparently. He looks over his shoulder, half expecting his Mother to be staring at them from her window, or the altars on the roof. Nobody is there.

Renjun tries to ignore him and walk away, but Donghyuck matches his stride again, so he resigns himself to walking with him. In a way, it feels nice to break up his mundane routine. And conversing with someone so obviously a Sun worshipper feels forbidden in a delicious way, just rebellious enough to incense his Mother but not incite a punishment.

“Good morning.” Renjun opens the gate to the road. “What’s in the basket?”

Hyuck opens it and holds it out, smiling like he always is. Always so bright. His body heat radiates through Renjun’s cloak sleeve. “I brought you breakfast.”

“How do I know you aren’t trying to poison me?” Renjun sniffs, crossing his arms. They’d stopped walking so he could peer into the wicker basket, which was rife with muffins and fruits. Donghyuck must be fortunate to be able to afford some of the rarer fruits, ones which were often used in offerings and blessings.

Briefly, Renjun wondered if he’d stolen it. But he looked so earnest, and sweet, and inherently good that he couldn’t believe he would do that. Or bear the bad luck that would follow it.

Hyuck reaches blindly into the basket, tearing a piece off of the top of a muffin and shoving it into his mouth. He chews emphatically and swallows, somehow still smiling, “See? All safe.”

Reluctantly, Renjun reaches in and grabs a muffin that appears to have chocolate in it. He hadn’t had time to grab breakfast before he’d been assigned chores. Plus, he’d never been the type to deny gifts served to him on a golden platter. Or in a wicker basket.

“This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Renjun gives him a warning look.

Hyuck grabs a muffin for himself and closes the lid. “Of course not.”

-

Renjun’s mother nearly faints when she sees the golden tint that’s creeped into his marks. They’ve always been a point of insecurity for him, a visible marker of his status, the prominence he’d never wanted and suffered greatly for. They’d burst and bleed and scab over, and run cold under the moonlight, and itch and itch and itch like a curse, but they’d never changed color.

Always the silver of a full moon. Staining his arms, circling his wrists, dipping down his collarbone to his sternum.

“You’ve been cursed,” his Mother said, voice hushed for the first time in a long while, rushing already to get her advisor, “Go pray, Renjun. _Go._ ”

So Renjun kneels in the falling snow, shivering, and prays. And his tears run hot down his face, and tingle, and burn, until he fears they’d leave another mark on him, twin trails on his cheeks. From the top of his head to his feet, slowly, he flushes. 

Snow melts under his knees, under his hands when he falls forwards. 

Like leaning over a fire. Like touching a flame without the repercussions. Like Donghyuck’s hand, circled around his fragile wrist, sending heat up his markings like a matchstick, startling yet oddly familiar.

For a second he thinks maybe Donghyuck _had_ poisoned him. Had done something to change his body, infiltrated his thoughts until his mind burned with thoughts of his sunlit smile and his hot, hot hands. Inside, though, he knows the truth. Like he’d known Donghyuck would never steal. It’s absolutely certain and it weighs heavy in the pit of his stomach.

The Moon goddess offers him no solace. She never has. She likely never will. Perhaps she can sense his mistrust, his hatred for his Mother. Perhaps his bloodline was tainted. Whatever it is, he can’t stand it much longer.

It isn’t Donghyuck’s fault he’s defected.

-

“I made this for you,” Hyuck hands him a pot, “It’s salve. For your markings.”

Lately, they’d been acting up. It’d been two weeks since they’d started to shift color, started to burn under the sun, and his Mother and her panel had been subjecting him to all methods of torture to stop it. From creams that burned his surrounding skin, drinks that made him unable to speak for hours after, jewelry meant to protect him that seared brands into him; nothing would work.

It came back stronger each time.

And while gold creeped into his winding, twisting, gnarled branches of birthmark, Hyuck creeped into his daily life, so much so that any length of time larger than that spent sleeping or bathing away from him felt strange. Odd. He’d become such a solid in Renjun’s life so quickly. And he understood him. 

Even everyday tasks were done together; Hyuck was accompanying Renjun into the forest to search for moonbeam and glowroot.

“Thank you, Hyuck,” he beams at the nickname, “Really. I’ll use it right away.”

“You should put it on now.” Hyuck grabs the pot back and unscrews the lid, the scent of cinnamon and cloves radiating from the container. It smelled like Hyuck. Like warmth and security. Even if it didn’t work as a salve, it would make him smell good.

“Here?” Renjun’s eyes widen, prompting a laugh from Hyuck.

“Yes, here.” he tugs at Renjun’s cloak, “Take this off.”

Even in the blistering heat of the summer, he’d never showed his arms in public. Now, in the blistering cold of the winter, he has a reason to layer up. Despite the cold, he flushes. Something about Hyuck shatters his usual demeanor. Makes him do things he wouldn’t usually do.

So, sheltered by overhanging willow trees, cupped in the palms of the forest, he removes his cloak, and then the shirt underneath, until his body is bared to the universe. And he doesn’t feel cold.

Hyuck reaches a hand out, more shaken than he’d ever outwardly been before, and Renjun files that away for later thought.

“You probably won’t be able to reach back here,” Hyuck explains as he turns Renjun around, pressing a steadying hand to his back.

When he rubs the salve in to the burning marks, Renjun can’t tell if it’s the salve or Hyuck’s hand that leaves a trail of fire in his wake. He thinks maybe it’s both.

-

“Pray, pray, pray,” Renjun’s Mother mutters, and then she screams, and she repeats it over and over and over until Renjun is out of the door, in the back garden, shivering in his underclothes, “Don’t come back until you’re normal again. Until you’re my son.”

And then she rushes back like she’s been burned, robes billowing around her, fear shining in her black eyes like a beacon. The door slams behind her. 

His marks burn like liquid fire and it hurts so badly that he wishes he could feel cold again. Snow kisses his skin and melts immediately, providing no solace, and he writhes on the stone floor and weeps for what he has become, what his Mother has made him, what he was born as.

And Renjun is stuck, exposed and burning up, praying to a Goddess that he isn’t sure he believes in. She sure as hell had never protected him.

-

He’d had to sneak inside to gather food and clothing. One of the benefits of being from a prominent family meant that he’d be able to provide for himself for as long as it took for his Mother to realize how much kicking him out would hurt her image. One word of him being her son and he’d have free lodging anywhere he wanted. 

As much as he hated taking advantage, he somehow felt he was owed it.

Hood pulled tight around his neck, he walks solemnly in the dusting of snow. Silver coats everything, mocking him. Cold didn’t have the chance to touch him. He radiated the warmth of an exploding sun, dangerous and scalding.

“Stop, please, stop,” someone rushed up to him, voice panicked enough to get him to pause.

He was brooding, not heartless.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, careful, hands tight on his bag. The boy was thin and tall like a reed, shivering like the snow would knock him over if he didn’t put all of his effort into keeping upright. A sun pendant dangled from his thin neck. He clutched it like it would keep him safe.

Red rims his eyes, which he reaches up and wipes at, flustered from the wind and perhaps something deeper.

“It’s Haechan,” he sobs, breaking down, “He needs you. Please come. _Please._ ”

Haechan. The Sun God. Many children were named indirectly after him, variations of his name, but most people didn’t dare utter his given name. Power is held in strange things. Renjun gapes at the boy.

“I think you have the wrong person.” Renjun backs away slowly, because the kid looks like a feral cat ready to pounce, dangerous in his undone state.

He shakes his head. “No. You’re Renjun. He needs you. Haechan needs you, don’t you care?”

The storm picks up, snow whipping around them like spirits, howling and shadowing over the sun. Everything looks so bleak, so dim. The boy shivers. How could a Sun worshipper be so cold? Is the Sun God as useless as Renjun’s own Goddess? As uncaring? Standing in the middle of the road hardly seems the time to have a breakdown, but Renjun begins to feel himself shattering.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know a, a Haechan,” Renjun spits the name out, feels wrong for saying it, and his marks feel hotter and hotter until he’s scared they’ll scorch through his clothes.

The boy makes a strange little exclamation and then says, “Donghyuck. You know him as Donghyuck,”

And he takes Renjun’s face falling as confirmation enough and takes off running, without checking to see if Renjun was there. He knew he’d follow.

-

Renjun had only ever been in the Moon temple before. He’d walked past the Sun temple, delivered gifts to the smaller planets like Mercury and Venus, but he’d never gotten past the front gate. Never learned their mythology, read their scripture; his Mother made sure of it.

Entering the Sun temple, he hadn’t had any time to look around, just barely registering the reds and golds and oranges of the stained glass windows and the distraught people rushing about, becoming more and more frantic as he was lead deeper into the temple.

For all he knew, this was a ploy. He was being lead to his death. Somehow, his concern for Hyuck outweighed all other fear. Like before, he knew in his stomach that Donghyuck was perhaps the only real, solid thing in his life. What kept him grounded. Something-- someone-- he could believe in. And he was really, truly in danger.

Renjun would do anything to help him. Anything.

The boy (who was named Jisung, apparently, if the yelling that had surrounded them on all sides when they’d burst through the heavy wooden doors was anything to go by) was taking him deeper into the temple, down rickety stairs and into a cellar that was wallpapered with shifting gold and covered in trinkets and blankets.

“Where are we?” Renjun pants, looking frantically around the room, trying to find Donghyuck.

“Where’s Haechan?” Jisung calls, ignoring his question, and rushes towards the unfamiliar voice that answered him with a strangled cry.

They step over strewn about pillows and clothing, beelining for an ajar door on the far side of the room. Jisung pushed it open, revealing a large bathroom. Donghyuck (Haechan?) is curled up in a large tub, eyes fluttering, neck high in visibly steaming water. He’s still in his clothes, clinging wetly to his skin, drying rapidly at the shoulders before getting wet again and repeating the process.

Renjun rushes over and leans down next to the tub, reaching immediately for his Hyuck’s hand. He’d never felt so intensely worried for anyone. It felt strange. As soon as his hand touches Hyuck’s, he blacks out.

-

He comes to in the cosmos. Everything rushes by him, so fast he can barely see it, swirling stars brushing his shoulders and leaving trails of heat. His hands glow golden, up his arms, up his neck, down his back, burning, burning, burning.

And Hyuck is in front of him. Eyes molten like the sun, hair illuminated from an invisible source, smile shaky and bright on his face.

Renjun rushes forward and hugs him, and his knees buckle, and Hyuck wraps surprisingly strong arms around him and weeps into his hair.

“I thought I lost you,” Renjun pinches his side through sobs, “I’m so confused! I hate being confused!”

And Hyuck laughs, and holds him tighter instead of squirming away. If he let go he would fall, spiral into oblivion. But, much like the past three months, Hyuck held him solidly in place. Made sure there was tangible ground beneath him.

Hyuck closed his eyes for a second, longer than a blink, and when he opened them there were two plush armchairs, floating in space. “Sit. I’ll explain.”

Behind him, the sun glows, far off in the distance. Behind Renjun, the moon. And there they are. Together. Under the stars. Under the sun and the moon. Renjun feels like he finally knows where he belongs, even without the explanation, because even when he’s left in the dark Hyuck is his guiding light.

“You’d better have a good explanation,” Renjun says, and reaches out his leg to hook his ankles around Hyuck’s. He’s never been so blatantly touchy. He’s never been in space. If this is a hallucination, it’s an incredibly realistic one.

“So, um, I’m like, the Sun?” Hyuck mumbles, and then says louder, “Like, the Sun God. That’s me!”

Renjun stares, and blinks, and after a moment says, “Yeah. Okay. Alright. Cool.”

Hyuck laughs at that, and he stands up, and slowly makes his way over to Renjun. He kneels on the void between Renjun’s thighs like he’s about to worship him. And it’s a lot to take in at once. Renjun feels like he may black out again.

“You’ve always known you were special, right?” Hyuck murmurs, reaching up and brushing Renjun’s hair away from his forehead, hands so, so hot. “Because you are, Jun. You’re powerful. And you’re beginning to come into it.”

Renjun nods, urging him to continue. So he does. He grabs Renjun’s hand and tells him to brace himself, and then he shows them in the bathroom, Jisung and the other boy staring at them in worry, Hyuck propped up in the bathtub and Renjun kneeling over the side, clutching his hand though he’s unconscious.

“That’s us,” Renjun says dumbly.

Hyuck smiles and presses a kiss to his hand, “Yes, it is. Don’t we look cute?”

Love has never come easily to Renjun. Most of his friends had only wanted to ride his status, and his family was power-hungry at best, image-obsessed at worst. But loving Hyuck had creeped up on him, warming his soul through thoughtful gifts and kind words and beautiful smiles. And now it’s hitting him all at once.

He glows brighter. “We do.”

“You’re my star, Renjun,” Hyuck says, voice smooth like honey, and it doesn’t sound cheesy coming from him, “You were born to light my way. Made just for me, yeah?”

He looks up at Renjun from the ground, stare bright and intense and hypnotizing. Behind him, the sun flares in tandem with his pulse.

Renjun holds his hand tighter and says, “Why are you hurt?”

“Our power is complex.”

“Nothing has ever been simple for me.”

An asteroid flies past them.

“When you began to come into your power, it, like, drew from mine. Which somehow made me more powerful? But weak, too. All at once. And we were both burning up.”

Renjun blinks at him. “You don’t know how this works either, huh? Such a big head with so little in it.”

Donghyuck puts a hand on either of his cheeks, and they’re both so warm their body heat is indistinguishable from one another, and he leans in until their foreheads touch, and they glow so brightly Renjun can barely see, and in that moment he doesn’t care that neither of them really know what, exactly, is going on. 

Knowing they were made for each other is enough for him.

He leans in at the same time that Hyuck does, and their lips meet. The stars explode. The chair fizzles out from underneath him. Void envelops them on all sides. His marks burn, and burn, and burn, and it feels better than anything he’d ever felt before. 

They kiss forever. New worlds form as their lips press together. Donghyuck trails a hand up his arm, skating up his neck and back to his cheek, up into his hair and down the back of his head, and he tugs at the short hair there. Renjun arches into him.

He presses a searing kiss to Renjun’s neck, and half expects a scorch mark to be left behind.

When they pull apart, he feels something inside of him settling, and his marks stop burning. Donghyuck has the same exact winding paths imprinted in his skin. They both stare, wide eyed, at the new markings for a moment, and suddenly they snap back into regular consciousness, startling Jisung and the other boy so much that they’d both screamed.

For a God, there was so much that Hyuck didn’t know. Renjun was sure of even less. But out of everything, he knew for sure that he would be alright.


End file.
